Made for swimmers. Great for everyone.

A conversation with Alana O'Flynn from Pentland Brands, Speedo, in November 2023 opened the door to a partnership between Speedo and Dulcie. What started as an exploratory discussion quickly became something much more exciting: an opportunity to completely reimagine performance skincare. 

Our idea was simple: what if we could replace petroleum jelly with something that does not harm the environment or compromise skin health?

For years, swimmers have relied on petroleum jelly, a product that's been part of the swimming ritual for generations. But here's what most people don't realise: this dependency comes at a real cost. It's not just problematic for the environment; it's causing genuine skin issues for the athletes who depend on it. 

We knew there had to be a better way. More than that, we knew we could create it.

The answer came from the waters around Margate. Watching bladderwrack seaweed cling to the rocks, with its soft, slippery texture, we had a revelation. This plant had already solved the exact problem we were trying to crack. It thrives in some of the harshest coastal conditions imaginable, protecting itself from salt water, temperature fluctuations, and constant movement.

What if we could harness those same protective properties for human skin?

This insight sparked everything that followed. Speedo brought their intimate knowledge of what swimmers need and how products perform under real training conditions. We contributed our approach to bio-design and years of work developing seaweed-based ingredients. The combination was powerful: together, we were building something neither of us could have created alone.

What made this collaboration truly special was the energy of genuine exchange. The Speedo team didn't just understand swimming; they understood the intimate details that make or break a product in competitive environments. The hours in chlorinated water, the friction points, the rituals athletes build their routines around. They pushed us to think differently about performance.

The process became a creative dialogue. Testing, feedback, refinement, and back again. Every conversation revealed new possibilities, new ways of approaching the problem. This is what collaboration should feel like: energising, challenging, transformative.

Here's what became clear as we developed the balm: while we designed it for the specific, demanding world of competitive swimming, we'd created something with far wider applications. The same properties that protect Olympic athletes in the pool serve anyone facing harsh environmental conditions. Open water swimmers battling cold seas, surfers spending hours in the ocean, cold-weather athletes, or simply anyone seeking serious skin protection.

That's the essence of "made for swimmers, great for everyone." When you design for the highest performance standards, you create something that works beautifully in countless contexts.

Creating a sustainable alternative to petroleum jelly proved something important: we don't have to compromise. Performance and sustainability can coexist. Efficacy and skin health can be the same thing, not opposite goals.

The Speedo x Dulcie barrier balm represents what becomes possible when you bring together different worlds of expertise with genuine curiosity and respect. Made from seaweed in Margate, inspired by the textures of bladderwrack, tested by world-class athletes, it challenges what we thought was possible in this category.

This collaboration showed me that the most exciting innovations happen at the intersection of different perspectives. When you combine deep athletic knowledge with thoughtful formulation, when you let the natural world inspire your solutions, when you refuse to accept "that's just how it's done", that's when you create something that genuinely moves things forward.

Written by Paula Camiña Eiras, Biodesign Lead